germany, ww2, espionage, historical-figures, historical-novel, historical-places-events, historical-research, history-and-culture, lgbt When I read this book I truly believed that it was a fictionalized true story of a man who lived and suffered under Hitler as well as his own conscience. And who is to say I was wrong. The presentation is that of remaining family members now living in England in 2017 being apologized to by the current espionage branch because as they were digitizing records ignored facts were discovered. The story shifts back and forth between 2017 and the life of Levi Horowitz regarding his service as an English spy in the heart of the Reich. Levi comes from a practicing Jewish family in Berlin and is sent to England (with a hiccup or two) to work and live in London where he is eventually tapped by the service to become a British agent in Berlin. There are many things that test his Faith as well as his sense of self. A heartwrenching pageturner of a read. I requested and received a free ebook copy from Harper 360/HarperCollins NZ via NetGalley. Thank you! There are two previous books in this series of the Horowitz family.

This is the third and final novel in the author's planned trilogy about the Horowitz family and events they took part in during World War II. I have not read the first two books so that certain described situations mentioned in this book are not familiar to me. While it would have helped overall understanding I did not lose complete track of events and could keep up with the flow of this book. Levi is a Jewish boy born into a well to do banking family living in Berlin, Germany enjoying life until the horror of Adolf Hitler and his cronies seized power and turned the country into a police state looking to conquer the world. Levi's father saw what was probably going to happen and sent Levi to live and work in England. He was supposed to establish a base in order to bring over all his family but fate threw him a curve and he began life as a spy thanks to the British government interceding with him, training him as a soldier, and sending him back into Germany to spy on Nazi activities for the allies. Levi returns and gets a position with a Nazi unit to both support himself and have access to information needed by his sponsors. As a young man Levi had developed a love for and a talent for music playing at a concert hall level. This skill helps him in working at his spy craft gaining entrance to homes of the very well connected including the very top: - Hitler himself. Themes running through the novel are Levi's having to apologize for his Jewishness and also to have to hide the fact that he is gay in a country which makes homosexuality a crime even to killing the person for showing a same sex love for another human being. While Ms. Thomas shows the amount of research she undertook to tell this story I fault her on jumping helter skelter from topic and circumstance to something else. There were a few situations where the reader could very easily have lost continuity and interest making it very far from an all nighter. Levi's constant fixing on his homosexuality is overdone and doesn't at all help maintain the reader's interest.